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Coalition Government

My Lords, we now continue with the debate. I apologise for the slight change in the speaking order between myself and my noble friend Lord Greaves. Communication between offices, particularly after last night, was not perfect. I hope that the House will forgive us for slightly confusing what is going on. It is also unusual to be speaking in a debate when most of the people you wish to address your remarks to have not made it back in. But, with perfect timing, the noble Baroness has arrived. That is quite understandable. The idea of the coalition and the constitutional settlement in this House has, as the noble Baroness rightly mentioned, been affected by what has happened over the past few days. I appreciate that I am biased when I make these remarks, but over the past few days we have heard a great many things a great many times. One is that we now have an iron majority on these Benches that can ram everything through. It is quite odd that a minute after we had our last big row on that, in which I had a small part, we then had a Government defeat inspired by a Government Back-Bencher. The Isle of Wight may not be an issue that will bring down Governments, but it proves that even under this new monolith of control, there is a degree of flexibility. Also, there is the fact that this House could change things quite happily. Before there was a balance, which I do not always regard as having been the sunny uplands, having spent so much of it sitting over there and voting against the now Opposition party. Sometimes we found ourselves struggling to be heard; sometimes our current partners in the coalition did not agree with us; sometimes we found ourselves being the major opposition on Bills. There were changes going on, and a situation that was rather more dynamic than has been painted. It was nice to hear the noble Lord, Lord Wills, speak for only eight minutes and make a coherent point. I hope that many of the people in this House will take on board the fact that you can do things efficiently and well. If we are going to try to make this House work, we will have to take a long hard look at ourselves and how things function. I feel that various political parties have a habit of forgetting about their opponents and putting them in certain boxes, based on the last time they had a look at them. The last time that happened with the party opposite was sometime in 1997. I remember on one occasion about two years ago when I was here at about 10.30 at night having a drink that had been bought for me by a Member of the now Opposition. It was suggested to me and another of my colleagues that all we really wanted was to keep the Tories out—those were the exact words. ““That’s what you really want””. As that Member of what is now Her Majesty’s Opposition had bought me a drink I did not rant and rail there and then, but the fact that I was there at 10.30 at night to vote against that Government should have been some indication that we were not going to welcome them with open arms on every single occasion. A slight hint had been given by our behaviour. That is something which people should bear in mind. If we are going to continue with this debate, we must bear these things in mind—the fact that we do have a right to form alliances and coalitions; the fact that behaviour in this House will be affected by them; and the fact that if people are appointed to this Chamber for life, it will lead to time lags and blocks. If we are worried about how this Chamber functions, we must look at having periodical culls. I speak as a hereditary Peer who has felt the breath of the whetted axe at least once. I have voted for reform in this House; I have admitted to doing it with gritted teeth, but I did it. We are going to have to look at reform. The fact of the matter is that it has been proven, or the House has been reminded, that a small group can delay things. Whether it was a filibuster or not does not really matter. Travelling at the speed of an arthritic snail amounts to the same thing, particularly on this occasion. If we are going to continue in this role, we will have to look at our own procedures. I do not like the idea very much but we do have a rather blunt instrument available to us at the moment—and I put my hand up as being a Teller when it was used. We must either accept its use more regularly or, if this behaviour continues, we must give the power to someone else. Alternatively, we must have a self-denying ordinance that we do not incessantly delay procedures. Unless these things are talked about, the nature of this Chamber will change. Many of my noble friends have spoken about the nature of politics and the noble Baroness put great emphasis on what goes into manifestos. I can tell you one thing about the coalition document for my own party—and I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, might agree with me. We did not sit down and talk about the subtext that we would have to present to the Government if we did not win, if we came second. We assumed we were going to win. Maybe we were being very arrogant. Maybe the party that lost, when it wrote its manifesto on the basis that it was going to win, was being a little arrogant. Maybe the party that came best out of all the people who did not quite win was being arrogant. But we all did it. Unless you are going to make us go away and rewrite our manifestos and come back later, we are going to have to accept that they are guidelines and principles as opposed to a shopping list of what you are actually going to do.